Max Ernst Loehr (1903–88): Principles of a Chinese Art History in Munich

The academic career of Munich art historian Max Loehr (Fig. 1) tells a story of personal migration, of transcending the boundaries between disciplines, of the exodus of East Asian art history from Germany between the two world wars. Unlike the overwhelming majority of his peers, however, in 1940 Loehr initially moved not to the United States but east: to the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek. After almost ten years spent researching and teaching in Beijing, he was forced to leave the country on the eve of the takeover by Mao Tse-tung and his Communist Party. In 1951, via Hong Kong, Paris, and, for another Translated by Richard George Elliott from German